Cupid Drawing His Bow (c. 1560s): Art, History and Details

Cupid Drawing His Bow (c. 1560s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Federico Barocci (Italian, 1528–1612).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This drawing formed part of the painter Federico Barocci's painstaking working method, which began with studies from nature, included sculpted models in wax, and concluded with full-scale cartoons in color. A detailed figure study such as this would have followed numerous compositional and life studies in preparation for the final cartoon. The squares drawn over the figure indicate it was meant to be transferred to a larger format. Barocci may have made this drawing as a preparatory study for his large altarpiece depicting the Martyrdom of St. Sebastian intended for the Bonaventura Chapel in the Urbino cathedral. The legs of the putto were used in his final rendering of the Christ Child in that composition. The technique of using black and colored chalks reflects the introduction, in the 1560s, of colored chalks (called "pastelli") to Italy, knowledge of which likely spread from Venice down the Adriatic coast to Barocci's home in Urbino.

Object facts

• Title: Cupid Drawing His Bow
• Date: c. 1560s
• Creator attribution: Federico Barocci (Italian, 1528–1612)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: black chalk with pastel (stumped in places), heightened with white chalk, squared with black chalk; framing lines in graphite
• Dimensions: Sheet: 42.4 x 27.2 cm (16 11/16 x 10 11/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - Italian
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1969.70

A detail from the museum

The grid of squares drawn over this figure was used by the artist or his workshop to transfer the composition to a larger format.

Collection credit

Dudley P. Allen and Delia E. Holden Funds

Further reading listed by the museum

• "Year in Review 1969." Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 57, no. 1 (January 1970).
• Neilson, Nancy Ward. Italian Drawings Selected from Mid-Western Collections. St. Louis, MO: The St. Louis Art Museum, 1972.
• Pillsbury, Edmund P., and Louise S. Richards. The Graphic Art of Federico Barocci: Selected Drawings and Prints. New Haven, CT: Yale University Art Gallery, 1978.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.